I still want to include an unholy sword in a 1st level game so the players have to figure out how to deal with it until they reach 2nd level and can hold it without dying. :)
If you wanna be cute about it, it would only take +1 unholy arrow
(166 gp) to murder all the 1st level goodguys who pick it up. :POf course, all you'd need is one Neutral or Evil PC and they could totally do it (or a Neutral PC in the cast of a +1 holy unholy arrow). I myself would probably use mage hand or unseen servant if possible. It'd be a wicked trap though. Especially since identifying an unholy weapon at low levels is not certain and even if it detects as evil (or any other alignment) who's gonna expect it? :P
|
Tactics can cause even the most unoptimized party to succeed.
You realize that tactics are the foundation of most rpgs. Thats why there are different classes that do different things so everyone can pool their resources together to defeat encounters.
This would be like saying " well a car can also get you places".
Of course, all you'd need is one Neutral or Evil PC and they could totally do it (or a Neutral PC in the cast of a +1 holy unholy arrow).You're not trying hard enough. +1 holy unholy chaotic axiomatic.
Heheh, the arrow of the equalizer! (The Equalizer was a sword in BG II which was essentially a anarchic axiomatic holy unholy weapon that was wieldable by Neutral charcters and was more devastating there further your alignment was from True Neutral. :P)
Reason #7 why Neutral is the best alignment.
Not sure why I was remembering unholy as inflicting the negative level on any non-evil characters rather than Good only. *shrugs*
Not sure. Though it was probably the cheapest way to begin a wightocalypse in 3.x. If you were slain via negative levels you returned as a wight. Scatter a few unholy or even holy arrows around a city and wait for the right commoner to pick 'em up. Suddenly they're dead with no explanation and a little later you have a wight capable of creating wights creating wights creating wights. :P
In d20 modern your massive damage threshold = Constitution score. So if you had a 12 Con and suffered 12 damage, it's Fortitude time baby!
There are actually 3 different options. You can do it with 10 points being the threshold, Con score, or 50. DM chooses.
Fail the save, and your hp goes negative, no matter how high it was before.
I still want to include an unholy sword in a 1st level game so the players have to figure out how to deal with it until they reach 2nd level and can hold it without dying. :)
Evil rogue of the party would laugh pretty hard. Next level up in fighter!
A good argument for pcs being of different alignments.
IMO, this should be something that all players should be wary of. There's no reasonable excuse for every monster they encounter to be assumed a viable combat choice.
Having said that, it's up to you, the DM to role-play how dangerous these creatures are. Displays of strength or killing npc's are a good way to let the players get a rough estimate of how bad ass the creature before them is.
A giant may heft up a boulder the size of a Clydesdale and lob it at someone for massive damage. There's a good reference to how continuing combat is going to go.
A dragon, on the other hand may instead rip an even larger chunk of rock, out of the side of a mountain and lob it at some people with messy results. That's a good indicator of how that fight is going to go.
Unless the players are in completely barren terrain, there's generally enough environment for a beast's thrashing about to relay a good proximity to it's power.
If the giant wolf beast can snap full grown trees like kindling in an attempt to get to the players, they have a really good idea what those teeth are going to do to them.
Use your presentation of the creature to reflect it's power level, after that, you can consider they appropriately warned.
The group I'm DM'ing for now were told up front, before the first game, there are creatures out there, that will easily destroy them. I even ran one session where there were fleeing from a sadistic inquisitor and his posse because they blew the previous session and found themselves wanted for murder of a wealthy member of the town they were in.
Each group of man-hunter rangers/ninjas was a struggle. It was set up as a chase through a swamp, and these smaller encounters kept them injured, sometimes poisoned. Talk of making a stand was unanimously decided as suicidal.
Adding sessions like this help with the flow of other games, where players will access situations better. They'll pay more attention to not just a guessed CR of the encounter by base CR, but they'll start paying more respect to numbers, terrain, etc.
This is, ultimately, a great way to help player immerse themselves in your world, and start acting like an adventuring group instead of a roaming death squad. Players like their characters, and they don't want their characters to die. Sessions that threaten to kill them and require them to explore options other than combat can really improve the quality of the game in general, as long at it's not over used. You do have to let your players shine, or else why try to be heroes.
Yeah the use of weight, size and power can be a good indicator of strength. Sometimes I have massive creatures fall on the party because the amount of damage they can do is enormous (reflex or splat).
Of course, all you'd need is one Neutral or Evil PC and they could totally do it (or a Neutral PC in the cast of a +1 holy unholy arrow).You're not trying hard enough. +1 holy unholy chaotic axiomatic.Heheh, the arrow of the equalizer! (The Equalizer was a sword in BG II which was essentially a anarchic axiomatic holy unholy weapon that was wieldable by Neutral charcters and was more devastating there further your alignment was from True Neutral. :P)
Reason #7 why Neutral is the best alignment.
Maybe. Real trouble is maintaining true Neutral alignment in a game where you all play heroes, and fight villains.
Say, what if any are the game rules for a PC character (Medium) throwing boulders?
3.5 Loyalist, I'd appreciate your checking out my He Man thread in Homebrew, and helping me out with some problems.
My meager offering:
It's less okay to pull a crazy threat out of a random encounter table or out of the blue and expect that your players know that this baker is also a shapeshifted duke of one of the nine hells.
It's more okay to doodle "here be monsters" on a map, or explain that the forest of death is called that because every hero in the kingdom, including Saint Gruntypants the Grunty (now Demi God Gruntypants) have been destroyed by the evil wandering aberrant monsters located therein.
And then there are times where players will refuse to fight a kobold because you've somehow convinced them it's a shapeshifted duke of the nine hells.
And times where they will decide that the Forest of Death is obviously located a mere 350 miles away from the village of Cakeholme in a cleaver ruse by the GM to hide the easy XP and loot.
Sometimes Pugwampis escape the pages of your bestiary and cause your game to go horribly wrong.
Maybe. Real trouble is maintaining true Neutral alignment in a game where you all play heroes, and fight villains.Of course, all you'd need is one Neutral or Evil PC and they could totally do it (or a Neutral PC in the cast of a +1 holy unholy arrow).You're not trying hard enough. +1 holy unholy chaotic axiomatic.Heheh, the arrow of the equalizer! (The Equalizer was a sword in BG II which was essentially a anarchic axiomatic holy unholy weapon that was wieldable by Neutral charcters and was more devastating there further your alignment was from True Neutral. :P)
Reason #7 why Neutral is the best alignment.
How so?
It does remind me of sword art. Some easy areas and dungeons, some hard ones. Some traps and secret rooms that will murder the crap out of you (you were good enough to find the secret door, but not good enough to survive what was inside, lol). I guess sword art cares not for appropriate CR.
In that, they do actually run (or try) if things get too heavy. Course the difference in this story is, no raise, they die it is over for them. So they don't trust in the magic CR equation.
Just last game last night, one of the party ran away and re-positioned because of too many opponents. Luckily the other party member held them off until the skirmisher came back. I like that I play with thinking players.
|
You should not expect your characters to consider running away. The default assumption is that all the challenges they meet will be designed to be level appropriate and thus, barring abysmal luck, the party will be able to defeat them. If you are running any published module, then this is the case.
Pathfinder is a game, and like any other game it has rules. It's perfectly fine to change the rules of the game as long as everyone agrees ahead of time. If you want your players to run, you are breaking the unwritten rules of how the game functions. If you haven't agreed to this change ahead of time, your players will feel angry and cheated. As long as you discuss this in advance so the players are aware that not everything they meet is going to be level appropriate, then you are justified in expecting them to stop and think before charging in to every potential fight.
Another thing to consider is that in battle players rely upon the support and teamwork of their fellows to succeed. Turning tail and fleeing, abandoning your fellows who are relying upon you is a cowardly act, honorable players may refuse on principle. If a fight is tough but close, one person fleeing will quite likely seal the outcome. Your friends might die because you ran away from a fight that you would have won had you stayed. Consider how many times you the GM have had a monster flee from the players only to be cut down before it could get away. How often do they actually escape? In my experience they rarely do. Also consider what happens in real life if you run into a scary animal while wandering alone in the woods. Running away from a bear, wolf, or cougar is a terrible idea, they're way faster then you are. Likewise in a fantasy world, if you run into a dragon, you aren't getting away unless it lets you, running isn't really an option when the monster chasing you flies 30 miles per hour.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
You should not expect your characters to consider running away. The default assumption is that all the challenges they meet will be designed to be level appropriate and thus, barring abysmal luck, the party will be able to defeat them. If you are running any published module, then this is the case.
Pathfinder is a game, and like any other game it has rules. It's perfectly fine to change the rules of the game as long as everyone agrees ahead of time. If you want your players to run, you are breaking the unwritten rules of how the game functions. If you haven't agreed to this change ahead of time, your players will feel angry and cheated. As long as you discuss this in advance so the players are aware that not everything they meet is going to be level appropriate, then you are justified in expecting them to stop and think before charging in to every potential fight.
Not quite. There is no rule, anywhere, that declares what sort of encounters or challenges you are supposed to face. The argument for an unwritten rule of it is pretty weak as well since the game it is a continuation of (3.x D&D) says directly otherwise (instead roughly 1/20 encounters are expected to be overpowering and something you should seriously consider fleeing from).
Another thing to consider is that in battle players rely upon the support and teamwork of their fellows to succeed. Turning tail and fleeing, abandoning your fellows who are relying upon you is a cowardly act, honorable players may refuse on principle.
Honor and stupid should not be confused. It is a disservice to honor.
If a fight is tough but close, one person fleeing will quite likely seal the outcome. Your friends might die because you ran away from a fight that you would have won had you stayed. Consider how many times you the GM have had a monster flee from the players only to be cut down before it could get away. How often do they actually escape? In my experience they rarely do.
Depends on how the monsters flee. Lots of them are darn good at it. Especially if they do things like drop caltrops in their wake or create concealment. Or they could just run the hell away (ranged weapons tend to have pretty large penalties as you begin counting increments). I've seen many enemies successfully flee. Some enemies successfully escaped in a game I'm playing in on Saturdays. When I'm GMing, enemies will frequently escape. Heck, my group just recently slew a bugbear that has killed one PC and escaped their grasp twice before (sweet, sweet revenge).
Also consider what happens in real life if you run into a scary animal while wandering alone in the woods. Running away from a bear, wolf, or cougar is a terrible idea, they're way faster then you are. Likewise in a fantasy world, if you run into a dragon, you aren't getting away unless it lets you, running isn't really an option when the monster chasing you flies 30 miles per hour.
An all out sprint isn't smart but come on, drop some caltrops or something, or throw up something to cover your escape (a smokestick, mist, fog, or even just some well placed illusions to block line of sight). Sometimes fleeing can result in you getting a more advantageous position in a fight.
You should not expect your characters to consider running away. The default assumption is that all the challenges they meet will be designed to be level appropriate and thus, barring abysmal luck, the party will be able to defeat them. If you are running any published module, then this is the case.
Pathfinder is a game, and like any other game it has rules. It's perfectly fine to change the rules of the game as long as everyone agrees ahead of time. If you want your players to run, you are breaking the unwritten rules of how the game functions. If you haven't agreed to this change ahead of time, your players will feel angry and cheated. As long as you discuss this in advance so the players are aware that not everything they meet is going to be level appropriate, then you are justified in expecting them to stop and think before charging in to every potential fight.Not quite. There is no rule, anywhere, that declares what sort of encounters or challenges you are supposed to face. The argument for an unwritten rule of it is pretty weak as well since the game it is a continuation of (3.x D&D) says directly otherwise (instead roughly 1/20 encounters are expected to be overpowering and something you should seriously consider fleeing from).
Another thing to consider is that in battle players rely upon the support and teamwork of their fellows to succeed. Turning tail and fleeing, abandoning your fellows who are relying upon you is a cowardly act, honorable players may refuse on principle.Honor and stupid should not be confused. It is a disservice to honor.
If a fight is tough but close, one person fleeing will quite likely seal the outcome. Your friends might die because you ran away from a fight that you would have won had you stayed. Consider how many times you the GM have had a monster flee from the players only to be cut down before it could get away. How often do they actually escape? In my experience they rarely do.Depends on how the...
I don't like it, but on this I agree with Ashiel.
|
|
Not quite. There is no rule, anywhere, that declares what sort of encounters or challenges you are supposed to face. The argument for an unwritten rule of it is pretty weak as well since the game it is a continuation of (3.x D&D) says directly otherwise (instead roughly 1/20 encounters are expected to be overpowering and something you should seriously consider fleeing from).You should not expect your characters to consider running away. The default assumption is that all the challenges they meet will be designed to be level appropriate and thus, barring abysmal luck, the party will be able to defeat them. If you are running any published module, then this is the case.
Pathfinder is a game, and like any other game it has rules. It's perfectly fine to change the rules of the game as long as everyone agrees ahead of time. If you want your players to run, you are breaking the unwritten rules of how the game functions. If you haven't agreed to this change ahead of time, your players will feel angry and cheated. As long as you discuss this in advance so the players are aware that not everything they meet is going to be level appropriate, then you are justified in expecting them to stop and think before charging in to every potential fight.
I don't recall anything in third edition to that extent, but I wasn't speaking about written rules, I was speaking about precedence. Even if there was a written rule stating otherwise, published modules have been designed to contain monsters in a specific level range since the early days of D&D. So yeah, you're going to find that most players assume that when something challenges them, they will be able to defeat it.
Honor and stupid should not be confused. It is a disservice to honor.
You are standing back to back with your lifelong closest friend, a pack of ravenous ghouls closing in on you. He is badly wounded and cannot run. Is it stupid to stand and fight to the bitter end?
There are times when the entire party can decide to retreat together and do so in an orderly fashion that doesn't leave them exposed. But unless it is obvious from the start that you do not want to fight, you probably wont consider running away until your team is badly wounded, possibly some of you bleeding out on the ground. A goblin will happily run off and abandon his fellows to the mercy of the players. The same is (hopefully) not the case with the heroes.These are just some suggestions of things to take in to account when you design an encounter that requires the players to run away. Go ahead and do it if you really want, but handle the situation with care and realize the potential for killing players or even wiping the entire party. Not a desirable outcome for a game unless you don't want your players to come back.
You should not expect your characters to consider running away. The default assumption is that all the challenges they meet will be designed to be level appropriate and thus, barring abysmal luck, the party will be able to defeat them. If you are running any published module, then this is the case.
Pathfinder is a game, and like any other game it has rules. It's perfectly fine to change the rules of the game as long as everyone agrees ahead of time. If you want your players to run, you are breaking the unwritten rules of how the game functions. If you haven't agreed to this change ahead of time, your players will feel angry and cheated. As long as you discuss this in advance so the players are aware that not everything they meet is going to be level appropriate, then you are justified in expecting them to stop and think before charging in to every potential fight.Another thing to consider is that in battle players rely upon the support and teamwork of their fellows to succeed. Turning tail and fleeing, abandoning your fellows who are relying upon you is a cowardly act, honorable players may refuse on principle. If a fight is tough but close, one person fleeing will quite likely seal the outcome. Your friends might die because you ran away from a fight that you would have won had you stayed. Consider how many times you the GM have had a monster flee from the players only to be cut down before it could get away. How often do they actually escape? In my experience they rarely do. Also consider what happens in real life if you run into a scary animal while wandering alone in the woods. Running away from a bear, wolf, or cougar is a terrible idea, they're way faster then you are. Likewise in a fantasy world, if you run into a dragon, you aren't getting away unless it lets you, running isn't really an option when the monster chasing you flies 30 miles per hour.
Some characters are cowards, not all have honour or are played as such, and going underground, into thick terrain or shutting a door/portcullis behind you can do wonders for halting something flying after you at 30 miles per hour. As for a dragon, well get into tight tunnels in which it can't fly and get out of the range of its breath weapon and you may just be safe (and your character alive). It can be dodgy to let your allies die, but if retreat really was the best option the party as a whole should take it, and not try to punish/condemn/stop the game of the player that was smart and lucky enough to actually escape the slaughter.
Not quite. There is no rule, anywhere, that declares what sort of encounters or challenges you are supposed to face. The argument for an unwritten rule of it is pretty weak as well since the game it is a continuation of (3.x D&D) says directly otherwise (instead roughly 1/20 encounters are expected to be overpowering and something you should seriously consider fleeing from).You should not expect your characters to consider running away. The default assumption is that all the challenges they meet will be designed to be level appropriate and thus, barring abysmal luck, the party will be able to defeat them. If you are running any published module, then this is the case.
Pathfinder is a game, and like any other game it has rules. It's perfectly fine to change the rules of the game as long as everyone agrees ahead of time. If you want your players to run, you are breaking the unwritten rules of how the game functions. If you haven't agreed to this change ahead of time, your players will feel angry and cheated. As long as you discuss this in advance so the players are aware that not everything they meet is going to be level appropriate, then you are justified in expecting them to stop and think before charging in to every potential fight.
I don't recall anything in third edition to that extent, but I wasn't speaking about written rules, I was speaking about precedence. Even if there was a written rule stating otherwise, published modules have been designed to contain monsters in a specific level range since the early days of D&D. So yeah, you're going to find that most players assume that when something challenges them, they will be able to defeat it.
Honor and stupid should not be confused. It is a disservice to honor.You are standing back to back with your lifelong closest friend, a pack of ravenous ghouls closing in on you. He is badly wounded and cannot run. Is it stupid to stand and fight to the bitter end?
There are times when...
You mean precedence as in AD&D? Where monsters would chew you up and spit you out, traps could insta-kill and it didn't take hordes to kill low hp characters in short order?
Precedence can really undermine your argument; in the days of yore many modules and adventures were very harsh.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I don't recall anything in third edition to that extent, but I wasn't speaking about written rules, I was speaking about precedence. Even if there was a written rule stating otherwise, published modules have been designed to contain monsters in a specific level range since the early days of D&D. So yeah, you're going to find that most players assume that when something challenges them, they will be able to defeat it.
Assumptions are not always the wisest. Let me tell you a story. Once during a game, the party who was 1st level, was wandering through a forest and saw an Ettin in the distance. An Ettin, for those not aware is a very big two headed giant. The ettin was clearly just out hunting and foraging. The rest of the party decided that they probably shouldn't provoke it or even try to keep it from noticing them. The monk in the party, however, decided that since they saw it then they must be able to fight it. That monk shall be missed. He was squished in a single blow and tucked into the ettin's sack and the ettin went back to make his dinner out of the monk.
It doesn't take many times before the players forget such stupid notions as "we can kill it if we see it" or that encounters are always fair for the players. It's never been that way. Not even in published adventures (hell the random encounter tables in Pathfinder APs and Modules tend to be pretty vicious from what I've seen). Sometimes smart tactics is knowing when to fight and when not to.
Honor and stupid should not be confused. It is a disservice to honor.You are standing back to back with your lifelong closest friend, a pack of ravenous ghouls closing in on you. He is badly wounded and cannot run. Is it stupid to stand and fight to the bitter end?
I'm curious how the friend got wounded this bad with a pack of ravenous ghouls closing in on you. At that point you might make the split altruistic decision to try and fight them off while your hobbling friend makes his way out. But that's not what you said before. You said to flee was cowardice and to stand and fight against terrible odds was honorable. Which I think is wrong. Facing down foes to buy someone else some time is honorable and you might be remembered as a brave hero if you're killed. But it's not honorable to commit suicide.
There are times when the entire party can decide to retreat together and do so in an orderly fashion that doesn't leave them exposed. But unless it is obvious from the start that you do not want to fight, you probably wont consider running away until your team is badly wounded, possibly some of you bleeding out on the ground. A goblin will happily run off and abandon his fellows to the mercy of the players. The same is (hopefully) not the case with the heroes.
I think some of your examples are a bit contrived. Being badly wounded is not a bad time to retreat. Especially if your enemy is still going strong or has reinforcements arriving. If some of you are bleeding out on the ground and you have no meaningful way to revive them, then it may just be a case where someone dies. It happens.
These are just some suggestions of things to take in to account when you design an encounter that requires the players to run away. Go ahead and do it if you really want, but handle the situation with care and realize the potential for killing players or even wiping the entire party. Not a desirable outcome for a game unless you don't want your players to come back.
This paragraph makes me think that you and I might not be talking about the same thing exactly. I don't think that even we who believe that running should be an option are actively building encounters that we expect the PCs to flee from constantly. We're just not of the mind that encounters necessarily scale with the party and often believe that just because it is there does not mean that you should fight it.
That being said, I've had party wipes before (though the only one that sticks out in my mind was actually a published adventure and not one of my own design), and I've had PCs die in games. My brother's dwarf alchemist just recently snuffed it when he refused to fall back from a bugbear barbarian and paid with his life. So far I've had less trouble with getting people to come to my games than I've had trying to catch a break from people asking me to run games constantly. I GMed a game once where 13 high level PCs were in the same group and 12 of them fled during the final encounter of the adventure before the cleric and the lich ended up reconciling their differences over a game of chess (the party's Paladin urged the rest of the group to fall back, including said Cleric, because if they could defeat the lich it would come at such a heavy cost as to not be worth simply destroying her body).
|
|
You mean precedence as in AD&D? Where monsters would chew you up and spit you out, traps could insta-kill and it didn't take hordes to kill low hp characters in short order?
hmm, I had a different experience in my early years, perhaps I just played with more lenient GMs.
I was, however, mostly thinking of much more recent stuff. Third edition modules, the rpga, pfs and other organized play content.Some characters are cowards, not all have honour or are played as such, and going underground, into thick terrain or shutting a door/portcullis behind you can do wonders for halting something flying after you at 30 miles per hour. As for a dragon, well get into tight tunnels in which it can't fly and get out of the range of its breath weapon and you may just be safe (and your character alive). It can be dodgy to let your allies die, but if retreat really was the best option the party as a whole should take it, and not try to punish/condemn/stop the game of the player that was smart and lucky enough to actually escape the slaughter.
If your entire party is made up of cowards then feel free to throw as many run away encounters as you feel like since they are going to flee anyway. I guess what I'm trying to say is: know your players. If you have someone you know is going to stand and fight no matter what, then be aware that you are punishing that person by throwing a must run away encounter. Worse case scenario you plan to have a monster jump out and scare the players and instead you kill them all and end the campaign. Making an encounter where the players must run is opening up this possibility. I would suggest that there may be safer methods to accomplish what you are going for. (ex. A giant taunts them, picks one up and tosses him in the air, then grows bored and leaves. The dire bear roars and postures but lets the players quietly withdraw). If you have the monster attack and expect the players to run, someone is likely to get killed.
As for that one player who escapes a horrific slaughter of his best friends by some unnameable horror from the abyss. He probably doesn't consider himself lucky or smart, he's going to be emotionally scarred for life and plagued with survivor's guilt.
I don't like it, but on this I agree with Ashiel.
I love you too. :P
Smile more! :D
:)
Yep.
Large possibly dire fauna, really dangerous flora as seen since the early days of dark sun (again AD&D), roaming giants or trolls, they can all be a good reason to retreat or not engage at all. Dark sun plants will kill you so dead at early to mid levels and drink your juices; a dire creature can make life tough or extinguish the life of a level 1 or 2 immediately. Low levels is really dangerous stuff, and the players should be thinking and assessing.
Level 9 or so can also be a dangerous spot, where players think they are invincible, but now they are into a whole new level of foe. Some of which can splat them quickly or take them out with supernatural/spell abilities. Got to have those thinking caps on.
Survivor's guilt might happen, but I've had neutral evil characters, mercs or strict professionals that would more pity that fools that stayed and died. What were they trying to prove? Why throw your life away? There are also 0 rules on survivor's guilt so it comes down to rp, and doesn't work as a punishment for such behaviour. A rogue that lives will count themselves lucky and quick!
Not a fan of rocket-tag, but some enemies are like that.
I was running Flight of the Red Raven for my brother and his friends. During the game they were beset by a random encounter of a truly goofy number of big wolves (I think it was something like 2d6 wolves with me rolling twin 6s). They ended up getting through that encounter 'cause one girl in the party had taken Expanded Knowledge (crystal swarm) on her Psychic Warrior and had a short range non-avoidable AoE attack that dealt damage around their average HP, which really deterred or cut through them as they were mobbing them (the CR of that encounter would have been CR 8 which is an "epic" random encounter).
Several of the encounters weren't fair for them at all (especially since they were down a couple of party members). Some of them did involve them running or hiding, or running back to areas in dungeons that they had already been to and would rather fight them there instead. They finally completed the module after a 12 hour marathon session (7pm to 7am) and had a blast the whole time (even though they were so certain they were gonna snuff it, especially when they realized they were resting in the big bad's treasure room :P).
Let me tell you guys a story.
One of my friends who does not like to GM was told it was his turn to run a campaign as everyone else was fed up with it (I was not part of said group).
He demanded a 15 page backstory from each of them and their characters by friday. They showed up. He sat them down and they began play.
"You all begin in a forest. What do you do?"
"We go north!"
"You see a stump in a clearing."
"We investigate it."
"A gargantuan black dragon swoops out of the air devouring your entire team in one mighty gulp. Thus ends the epic of the annoying adventurers."
They really should have run. Seriously out of the room. I'm surprised they made their sanity checks. Some of those back stories were well written, I think at least several hours worth of work (got to read some).
|
|
my comments were thoughts on the OP's question
is it reasonable to expect players to understand when they are outmatched and to expect them to run away.
The GM controls what the players run into, even if the GM rolls on random tables, they are still making a decision to have their players be able to run into creatures that they will be unable to defeat. So I was making suggestions on things to keep in mind for these types of encounters. I am also writing for the type of GM who wants to make an entertaining experience for their players, not an idiot who thinks GMing is me vs the players and I win by killing them all.
I wasn't talking about when you are in a fight that is supposed to be balanced for your party level and it goes bad. Those things happen, you can't really plan for luck. Dragon wins initiative, breathes fire, hits entire party, rolls max damage, they all fail their saving throws. Might have been a balanced encounter, but the players got terribly unlucky. In these situations, I think you can definitely expect your players to realize they need to retreat, regroup and try again.I think it's also worth noting that to you the GM it might be obvious that the players should run, but it might not be to the players. Especially once you are in mid level ranges, where you are defeating huge monsters. Unless your players have memorized the bestiaries and are shameless metagamers, they will probably try to fight. (even making knowledge rolls to identify the creature doesn't really tell you what challenge rating it is. And running away because their roll of 35 failed the knowledge check would be metagaming).
Let me tell you guys a story.
One of my friends who does not like to GM was told it was his turn to run a campaign as everyone else was fed up with it (I was not part of said group).
He demanded a 15 page backstory from each of them and their characters by friday. They showed up. He sat them down and they began play.
"You all begin in a forest. What do you do?"
"We go north!"
"You see a stump in a clearing."
"We investigate it."
"A gargantuan black dragon swoops out of the air devouring your entire team in one mighty gulp. Thus ends the epic of the annoying adventurers."
They really should have run. Seriously out of the room. I'm surprised they made their sanity checks. Some of those back stories were well written, I think at least several hours worth of work (got to read some).
Their first mistake was writing a 15 page backstory. The only game with near such requirements was also one where my character was jobbed most foul. Too bad, you die, no change.
Yay?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
We were in a published module, so this was not some GM error. Our level 7 party included my druid, a sorcerer, a battle cleric, a rogue and a ranger. We were searching for the source of some corruption that was seeping out of a local swamp. At some point we reached this large marshy area which was all either difficult terrain (mud) or open water (bayous mostly). We were terribly exposed. The party was sort of stuck with slogging through the marsh, since the corruption clearly was either coming from the marsh, or from the other side, and it would have taken days and days to hike around it.
So off we go. After an hour or so of slogging through the swamp at half speed, we spy something large in the sky. OK, larger than "large". In the end it turned out to be a huge black dragon, and it had seen the party.
"We can take it" says the cleric."
The party set up a defensive position and got ready to attack the dragon with ranged attacks and spells as soon as it got into range.
The dragon didn't even attack. It just flew low over the party. His aura did the rest.
Most of the party failed their saves and fled in blind panic. The sorcerer and my druid succeeded. The sorcerer's initiative was higher than mine. So by the time it was my turn, the sorcerer was hiding invisibly, the battle cleric was sunk in a bayou and the rest of the party was scattered to the four winds. So what should my druid do? Fight a dragon alone? She wildshaped into some water creature and went after the battle cleric to keep him from drowning. The dragon looked around, saw two characters fleeing in panic and simply continued on his way.
It is my personal opinion that those failed will saves probably saved the party from a potential TPK. Running away in blind panic was, I think, the best tactical approach to that situation.
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
|
Thread is TL;DR.
Picking fights with strange monsters and large numbers of enemies is dangerous business. Heroes are heroes because what they do is risky. Sometimes you bite off more than you can chew. Smart adventurers/players will figure that out pretty quick. Those that don't will have short, heroic careers.
As a GM, you should not assume that players will run away. They may prefer a heroic last stand on some random encounter to living to accomplish the adventure's plot goals. You should not place challenges that they cannot overcome in between the PCs and their goals. That's no fun. But you can place extremely difficult challenges in their way, or challenges that require some unconventional action on their part to overcome. "Season to taste," however... players probably don't enjoy if they constantly have to retreat/surrender with nary a chance to turn the tables on the badguys.
As players, you should not assume that you can safely defeat any challenge you happen across--ESPECIALLY if the GM uses random encounter tables.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I totally GM wrong man. Based on what I read on these boards, it's as if I never passed GM 101.
I'll throw encounters at my players that they better run from. My players could easily blunder into an area where they should stay away. Most such places have plenty of clues that the PCs would notice, and normally that's all it takes. But they could do it if they wanted to.
And I'll throw encounters that are way, way below their CR level as well. In fact my next encounter I have planned for my level 9 party is a swarming horde of CR 1/2 or 1/3 creatures that they'll probably dispose of without breaking a sweat.
I've learned that every now and then players seem to enjoy just seriously kicking butt on some monsters that used to give them fits. Makes them feel like they've grown.
*kills 200 Goblins*So how much Xp did we gain?
Everyone add 30 experience...
O.o
Just another excellent example of why I don't do XP anymore.
Running a sandbox, I have very little control over what the players encounter. If they run into something that can scrub the floors with their characters, they should run, otherwise they die.
On the other hand, they often research where they are going, and prepare for it. Just because the APL is 5, I'm not going to change the orcish warriors guarding the place into trolls.
And my players are VERY good at picking the low-hanging fruit.
|
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
|
I totally GM wrong man. Based on what I read on these boards, it's as if I never passed GM 101.
I'll throw encounters at my players that they better run from. My players could easily blunder into an area where they should stay away. Most such places have plenty of clues that the PCs would notice, and normally that's all it takes. But they could do it if they wanted to.
And I'll throw encounters that are way, way below their CR level as well. In fact my next encounter I have planned for my level 9 party is a swarming horde of CR 1/2 or 1/3 creatures that they'll probably dispose of without breaking a sweat.
I've learned that every now and then players seem to enjoy just seriously kicking butt on some monsters that used to give them fits. Makes them feel like they've grown.
All that is fine, great even! All I said was that you shouldn't place impossible encounters in between players and plot. That makes an adventure impossible and unplayable. Even putting unbeatable encounters in an adventure is OK as long as the players have some way to bypass/ignore/overcome asymmetrically... including running away until they have some more levels. As to whether or not they actually run away or die in place, that's up to them.
There's also the opposite risk that the players will get lucky or come up with something you didn't think of that lets them win that impossible encounter. I've seen low-level parties take out serious opposition just by bull-rushing it off a ledge or something. 3rd level monk grapples the 14th level wizard, game set match. That kind of thing.
BTW I totally agree with the use of low-CR mook hordes. Straight skulldragging a horde of badguys is so much fun as a player.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Charlie, I am in agreement with you with the following caveat:
I sometimes will put an impossible encounter as part of the plot. The purpose is usually to develop some personal vendetta or animosity between the PCs and a particular BBEG so that they develop a powerful desire for revenge against that BBEG. It has been my experience that one of the most satisfying things to do in the game is beat down the dude that beat you down twice before.
I totally GM wrong man. Based on what I read on these boards, it's as if I never passed GM 101.
I'll throw encounters at my players that they better run from. My players could easily blunder into an area where they should stay away. Most such places have plenty of clues that the PCs would notice, and normally that's all it takes. But they could do it if they wanted to.
And I'll throw encounters that are way, way below their CR level as well. In fact my next encounter I have planned for my level 9 party is a swarming horde of CR 1/2 or 1/3 creatures that they'll probably dispose of without breaking a sweat.
I've learned that every now and then players seem to enjoy just seriously kicking butt on some monsters that used to give them fits. Makes them feel like they've grown.
*kills 200 Goblins*
So how much Xp did we gain?
Everyone add 30 experience...
O.o
200 Goblins, huh?
Using these resources: Gamemastering in the CRB and Goblin from bestiary 1
1 Goblin = CR 1/3
3 Goblins = CR 1
16 creatures = CR+8
16 x 3 = 48
48 Goblins = CR 9. And that's just a quarter of the goblin horde.
Assuming a 4-5 character party, you're looking at 1600xp per character just for 1/4 of the horde.
I'm not sure how the math would go beyond that. It looks like a sequence where it doubles the number of creatures added every other CR increase (+1, +1, +2, +2, +4, +4....). Expanding that out to 24 (CR+9), 32 (CR+10), 48 (CR+11), 64 (CR+12) we get:
64 x 3 = 192 Goblins for a CR 13 encounter. For a 4-5 person party, we're looking at 6400 xp per character.
Now, instead, if we were just to throw the party against 4 sets of CR 9 goblin encounters (48 each), it would be 1600xp x 4 = 6400xp. Look how nicely that fits together with our previous calculations.
Of course, those last 8 goblins would net slightly less than 300xp per character; a piddling amount for characters who need 30,000 xp to level.
|
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
|
Charlie, I am in agreement with you with the following caveat:
I sometimes will put an impossible encounter as part of the plot. The purpose is usually to develop some personal vendetta or animosity between the PCs and a particular BBEG so that they develop a powerful desire for revenge against that BBEG. It has been my experience that one of the most satisfying things to do in the game is beat down the dude that beat you down twice before.
Then we are in complete agreement. Impossible encounters as part of the plot aren't the same thing as impossible encounters that keep the players from moving toward the plot... they just make the players take a more circuitous route. Complications are the essence of plot!
|
|
We were in a published module, so this was not some GM error.
Well, there might have been some GM error. In PFRPG (and I think 3.5, but I'm not certain), the fear aura of a dragon, against 7th-level PCs, can only cause them to be shaken.
The only reason I know this off the top of my head is that Jason Nelson reminded me of it in the Jade Regent thread, when I mentioned that I didn't up the age on a dragon because I didn't want my group to run in fear (at least, not against their will).
Hmm... Jeff, maybe we weren't seventh level yet then. I can't claim to recall accurately. What if it were sixth?
|
|
Hmm... Jeff, maybe we weren't seventh level yet then. I can't claim to recall accurately. What if it were sixth?
In PFRPG the cut-off is 5th. If it were 3E or 3.5, I really don't have a good enough memory to say.
I think the reason I could never seem to remember that is that it just seems wrong that a freakin' dragon with frightful presence can only cause "Shaken." (It takes an Adult dragon to get the aura, which is minimum CR 10 (white dragon), so in practice the Frightful Aura is not going to cause panic unless it's stacking with another effect. Or it's a rat-bastard GM throwing a CR+6ish encounter at his group ... )